Camera Club

Few filmmakers have made fetish their domain the way that single-minded Nick Orleans has, still active decades later with his latest A&E release "The Lingerie Effect". But "Camera Club" may be his magnum opus in this field, a unique look-back at the innocent era of the 1950s and its wealth of underground pornography and titillation.

Title derives from the old practice of horny guys buying or renting Brownie cameras to shoot (or pretend to) lovely models in sessions with other guys, a primitive form of soft-core DIU cheesecake. Orleans' film, which star Violet Blue claims was shot without a script but utilizing improvisation instead, covers many other '50s bases, some thrilling and others (notably a lengthy and stupid Nudist Camp sequence) merely self- indulgent.

Violet serves as the host, introducing a series of nine related sex scenes while a jazz drummer plays on stage behind her. She's wearing period undergarments, garter belt included of course by fetishist Orleans.

The loose framework of her sex life and that of her friends does smack of improv, tighter than say a recent Terrence Malick thumb-sucking movie but lacking the overall impact and tied-together of a Cassavetes classic. Unfamiliar players in the supporting lineup score big dividends: Corina Taylor beautiful and irresistible as a horny lady with horn-rimmed glasses in the library who humps the husband of Violet's best friend Fran; Fran herself as interpreted by busty Yasmine Vega -who gets to have a solid lesbian scene with Violet and an even hotter orgy late in the film; Victoria Givens as a stripper with a fine act that culminates in servicing big-dicked John West on stage; Jessica Sweet as a Marilyn Monroe type of impersonator (not really) having a solid three- way with Violet to climax the picture; and Lexi Matthews, dynamite in a gang bang in a vintage convertible after being photographed by members of the Camera Club.

Some famous starlets pop up as uncredited nude extras in the dumb Nudist Camp sequence playing badminton, including Eva Angelina before her breast enhancement surgery. But the tribute to those Nudies of the '50s and early '60s falls flat, as it's played as a sort of burlesque skit that goes nowhere, and even features Joel Lawrence in an uncredited cameo.

Byron Long is on-hand in a combination Uncle Tom performance plus interracial sex content servicing Violet as her wish-fulfillment.

But what makes "Camera Club" weird and unique is an experiment Orleans undertook that is way out there. I had seen "merkins" in use on the series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" on pay-cable, but Orleans goes hog- wild, outfitting most of the women and even the men with these artificial pubic hairpieces that figure prominently in the hardcore sex scenes for nostalgia purposes.

It's a truism of cinema that the best special effects are those that are not noticeable (e.g., high-quality matte shots), but for some reason (or fetish?) Orleans has his talented makeup lady May Balleen exaggerate. There are a couple of shots where the bush looks real, but mainly it seems like a running joke akin to the phoniest of Halloween Groucho fake mustaches. For Adult Cinema fans with a sense of humor these merkins make "Camera Club" required viewing.

It's no coincidence that Orleans returned recently to the scene of his crime with the supremely silly "Bringing Back the Bush", yes, a 2016 Adam & Eve feature aimed at pay-cable about young women like Raven Rockette who prefer to let their hair grow down there, no merkin required.